Sixteen
by karabair
Summary: A week before her sixteenth birthday, Jean Grey took an unscheduled leave of absence from Xavier's School for the gifted. ScottPOV.


Title: Sixteen  
Fandom: _X-men movieverse_  
Characters: Scott/Jean UST + Storm  
Disclaimers: Characters and situations belong to a bunch of people who aren't me. I'm going with the assumption that Scott, Jean, Storm, and Hank are the same age (whether or not the actors look like it!) and part of the first class at Xavier's.

_Sixteen_

One week before her sixteenth birthday, Jean Grey took an unscheduled leave of absence from her studies at Xavier's School for the Gifted.

Scott got the news from Hank, who tore around a corner and knocked the calculus book from his hands to the floor, almost taking Scott down with it.

"My most humble apologies," Hank gasped, kneeling to help his friend pick up the scattered papers, "but I hope you will pardon my haste when I inform you of a truly infelicitous circumstance, which presents, I dare apprehend, the most critical dilemma –"

"Can you speak English?" Scott demanded, grabbing the crumpled notes away from Hank. It was too late, anyway, they were out of order. He knew it was mostly his own fault for trying to read while he was walking down the hallway of the dorm, but blaming himself didn't make Scott feel any less cranky. "Tell me this isn't about Professor Lensher," he said, "or Magnet-man, or whatever the hell we're supposed to call him now." He took a moment to wonder whether the calculus exam would be cancelled, and another to feel guilty that this had been his first thought.

By that time, Hank had dismissed his fears of facing off one more misguided crusade to prove mutant superiority, and was telling him something much worse: "Miss Grey is leaving the country expeditiously. Perhaps as soon as tomorrow."

"Jean's what?" Scott stammered. "Why?"

But all Hank could say was that he had heard it from Ororo. Scott forgot his papers and went tearing off in the direction of Jean and Ororo's room.

"Cyclops!" Hank called after him – clearly recognizing this as a combat situation that required battle names. "How shall we inform the young ones?"

"Deny all knowledge!" Scott called, without looking back.

He found Ororo in the room alone, sitting cross-legged on her bed and looking at a fashion magazine.

"Storm!" Cyclops gasped, dashing through the door. "Beast told me. What the hell is happening?"

Ororo shrugged – not Storm-like at all -- and flipped a page. "Search me. I just got a brainwave from Jean to meet her here and help her pack, because her parents were pulling her out of school." She shrugged. "I didn't get much more than that, but she seemed pretty distracted."

"Distressed?" he demanded.

"Or excited. For God's sake, sit down." He was closest to Jean's bed, but the idea unnerved him so much that he sat next to Ororo instead. She shut the magazine, tossed it onto the endtable, and said, "Scott, what the hell are we going to tell the kids?"

"The important thing is, we can't let them say anything to Jean. We do what we have to do – threaten them with eye lasers, lightning strikes, evisceration –"

"So, the usual?"

"Whatever it takes. Jean is going to be upset enough as it is."

"Forget Jean," Ororo shot back. "We've been building this up so long, what are the underclassmen going to think when it doesn't happen? Not to mention Alison and Remy, who've been working their asses off on the entertainment." Ororo snapped her fingers. "What if we move the timetable up and make it a Bon Voyage party?"

"No way. She'll know we never came up with this at the last minute. If she realizes how much effort we put in – well," he finished lamely, "she'll feel bad."

"Maybe she should! I don't remember the whole school going all out to put on a secret surprise sweet sixteen for me."

"We couldn't exactly surprise you," Scott answered. "You dropped hints for about a year, then planned the whole thing yourself and put us all to work – come on, I spent three hours on that seating chart."

"You love charts. Those three hours were your favorite thing about the party." Ororo was always making statements like this, and they might have been less annoying if she had ever been wrong. She crossed her hands behind her head and leaned back against the wall. "All I'm saying is, if Jean really wanted a big party, she wouldn't have left it all to chance."

"She didn't leave it to chance," said Scott. "She left it to us. Besides, it's –"

"I know, I know. And besides -- " Ororo put on a deeply earnest voice, and repeated the phrase Scott had been using to win every argument about the party in the last six months, "Besides. It's _Jean_." Resuming her normal tone, she said, "I swear, I'd think that Jean was psychically influencing you to do this. Except that I know she doesn't need to and besides, when it comes to picking up signals from her, you – oh, hi Jean!"

"Guys?" Jean raced into the room and, in a moment, was crushing both of them in a tight hug. "This is just the most amazing news. I'm going to Paris for my birthday."

Scott had to admit. She didn't sound distressed.

A year ago, he would never have attempted to throw a surprise party for Jean, much less to let a lot of well-meaning but raw mutants from the lower grades in on the secret. But Jean had been working with Professor Xavier on controlling her power – working nonstop, it sometimes seemed – and now she said that she hardly ever picked up a stray thought. (She said it with relief -- _You can't imagine what it's like, Scott, never to be alone in your own brain._) She would never willfully read her friends; on that point she was firm and so, theoretically, it should have been possible to surprise her.

Still, Scott knew it would be a challenge. It was hard enough to keep a secret in a place like this, even when no psychic powers were involved. So maybe there had been a little effort to strike fear in the hearts of the younger ones – if only so that, in case of stray thought, "terror of laser beams, lightning strikes, and evisceration" would most likely rise to the surface. The threats were almost entirely idle.

And, it turned out, unnecessary. The entire effort was wasted, because Jean wouldn't be there. Scott had come looking for her, prepared to commiserate, and discovered that any misery in the situation would be entirely his own. Jean's most immediate concern was not being untimely ripped from the bosom of her friends, but having no idea what she was going to wear.

"I don't know what the weather's like and – you know, day versus evening? I don't want to look too much like a tourist, but I don't want Mom and Dad to flip out and – hey, what do you think of this?"

She was talking to Ororo, of course. They both knelt on her bed with the magazine open between them. Scott, being not only male but legitimately color blind, was thankfully spared from the conversation. He stood shifting from one foot to another, searching for an excuse to get out of the room.

But Ororo saw him edging towards the door, and she slapped the glossy pages shut. "How about this? I'll go through your closet, and pick out a few of your best." She gestured at both beds. "Then I'll need lots of room to lay them out, and – no Jeanie, I don't want you looking over my shoulder. Why don't you go out and --" She pointed to Scott, as though the thought had just occurred to her "—talk to him. Tell him all about your trip. He's got something to tell you too."

"I do?" Scott asked.

Jean laughed and got to her feet. She patted Scott's shoulder. "Poor guy. We're scaring you with all this girl talk. Come on, let's go see how Hank's making out with that old motorcycle. We can talk on the way, and then you can get your hands greasy and show me all the gears."

She went into the hall, but Scott hung back long enough to quiz Ororo in a low voice. "What am I supposed to be talking to her about? I'm not telling her about the party."

Storm gave him the gaze that made tornadoes quail in fear. "I didn't _mean_ the party." She shook her head. "You're unbelievable."

"And you're nuts."

"Yeah, because I'm the one who would rather spend five months overplanning a party than tell a girl he likes her."

"I don't –"

"Go!"

"You're nuts."

He walked out the door and found Jean leaning against the wall, a wry smile on her face. "Are you and Ororo telling secrets again?"

"Must be quite the temptation for a mind reader."

Jean scowled. "Don't say that. You know I wouldn't."

"I know." He sometimes wished she would. He wished she would read his thoughts and tell him what the hell they meant. Professor Xavier could do that; he sometimes did – although, of course, his way of telling had that very special Yoda-like quality, so that you never knew what it meant until the point where you could have figured it out by yourself. So it was pretty much a useless skill. Scott didn't think Jean would be cryptic like that. She would take his confusion of teenage thoughts and sort them out, tell him which ones mattered and which ones he could let go. Sometimes he thought Jean would do that for him, if he asked. He thought maybe she wanted him to.

It didn't matter. He wasn't going to ask.

"So this trip," he said, breezing ahead of her, as though there was nothing he cared about more than getting to Hank and the damn motorcycle. "Was it your folks' idea?"

"Yeah, it was a total surprise." She smiled. "Which is cool, if you think about it. I used to be unsurprisable. I guess it means I'm making progress. Only – " she sighed. "I do wish they'd asked me before they scheduled it. This is really the worst time of year to leave the school."

Scott took a moment to feel guilty about the discarded calculus notes, decided he had done his duty on that front, and went on to reassure Jean. "Come on, you and Hank are the best students here. And you've said yourself that your tutorials with the Professor are way ahead of schedule."

"I'm not worried about that. The Professor already said I've made enough progress to be done for the year. Mom and Dad checked with him before they got the tickets." Scott winced inwardly. He hadn't included Professor Xavier in any of the party plans. He had wanted this present to be from the other students, not from the Professor or the school. Still, Xavier didn't seem to have any of Jean's scruples about mind-reading and so he had to know. Maybe this was another lesson. _Don't try to keep secrets from the Professor, or he'll pretend to let you._ Jean continued, "I just wish it wasn't such a bad time for of year everyone else. Because if we could have gone later, I bet they would have let me be a friend."

"Ororo will be disappointed."

"Ororo's been to Paris." Scott stopped short, and looked back at her. "I didn't mean Ororo."

Scott started to laugh, but Jean bit her lip, and pushed the long hair over her shoulder. He sometimes wished she would read his mind, but he was glad she couldn't see the way his eyes followed her hair. Nobody said a teenage mutant's brain had to make sense. "What would I do in Paris? I'm not exactly a recreational shopper." This was sort of a lie. He was vain about his dress shirts, and he had been eyeing a leather jacket in a shop window in town. If he and Hank ever got that damn bike together, after all, he would pretty much need one.

"There are libraries," she said. "Museums."

"I don't read French, and art is all shades of red to me."

"There are restaurants," she said. "You could eat. You could take me to the movies. Paris has something like more revival houses than the rest of the world put together." Jean leaned back as though to get a better look so she could study him, figure out why he was being so impossible. Good luck with that; he didn't know why he was being so impossible. This is where the mind reading would come in handy. "You could go with me," said Jean, "and be someone who isn't my mom, or my dad, or my obnoxious little brother. Someone who I've actually spent time with over the last three years. Who knows me." Her hand moved to his arm, and his eyes followed, as though there were a string connecting her slender fingers to his line of vision. "Scott, you're my best friend."

"I thought Ororo was your best friend."

"Well, she is. You're all my friends." As though the statements were remotely the same.

Jean's hand slipped down to her side. "You should come visit."

"In Paris?"

"In Connecticut. At my parents'. It's only a few hours by train, and then maybe when you and Hank get that bike together, you might --."

"Wait, what? I heard Paris. Who said anything about Connecticut?"

"The spring term's over in a couple weeks, so by the time we get back –"

"Sure, but summer –" It had always been the four of them, since the first summer. "We've got a lot to work on. Training and -- training schedules and --"

"My folks want me to do this state science fair – gifted – program thing. It's just for the summer." Jean turned so fast he stumbled into her. She offered a hand, but he steadied against the wall. Before he could say, _Why didn't you tell me that part?_, she snapped, "I'm telling you now."

"Stray thought?" he asked.

She flushed and looked down. "That hardly ever happens anymore."

"That's why." He stepped closer. "Look at me, Jean. That's why this is happening. Everything went really well in your lessons, better than the Professor ever expected. And now you can go out in the world like a –" he can't say 'normal,' – "like one of _them_." People outside the school, people who never treated Scott like he was worth anything even before they knew what he was.

Jean's eyes narrowed. "You sound like Magneto now."

"_Erik_ --" Scott replied, because no one would ever convince him to say that stupid name – "doesn't have to be wrong about everything."

"When you say 'them,' you're talking about my family. You're talking about friends and people I grew up with. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you didn't have any of that. I really really am. But I'm not sorry I had it, and I'm not sorry that I sometimes miss it. I'm just sorry if my talking about it makes you feel bad."

Scott felt the color rise to his face, and he turned from her. "I thought you didn't read me."

"I didn't have to. You're not as mysterious as you think." She crossed her arms over her chest, as though to fight off a chill, and spoke quietly. "I want to go back there for a while. And I want you to come visit. So my family and my friends can meet someone like you."

"Someone like me," Scott repeated. Not her best friend, then. The team leader. The Boy Scout. The model student. "The guy who could blast a hole through their house with the blink of an eye?"

"But wouldn't. Don't you see? You have all this power, but you know how to control it." She raised her hand and he thought she was going to touch the frame of his glasses. He jerked his head back instinctively, but her finger only stopped to graze his cheek. "I was jealous, you know. You learned so quickly. It took me a long time, but now I'm like you."

"Birds of a feather," Scott heard himself saying.

"Flock to each other. We don't fly away." Her palm rested against his chin. "You're not getting rid of me that easily, Scott Summers."

He thought – suddenly, surprisingly – that he should kiss her. He knew he wouldn't – she was going away; he had a calculus exam; he couldn't kiss Jean Grey and let her fly away from him and then go take a fucking math test. It would be too stupid. So he lifted her hand from his face, and clasped it in front of him, and they were best friends again. Birds of a feather, comrades in arms, X-men.

"I guess this is the part where I tell you happy early birthday?"

"You know the funny thing?" Jean started walking again, and said over her shoulder. "I've been so preoccupied with all these lessons, I completely forgot it was coming. Remember how worked up Ororo got about her silly sweet sixteen party? I can just picture you tearing your hair out over those damn seating charts." She laughed and a thought struck her and she stopped. "I hope nobody was planning anything for me."

Scott shrugged. "I guess the usual. Cake. I hear they let you eat cake in France."

"The queen even encourages it." Jean grinned, then just as quickly, she frowned again. "Didn't Ororo say you had something to tell me."

"The usual. _Bon voyage_. Hurry back. Don't be a stranger."

"Don't be a stranger," Jean repeated, lingering over the words as though they were new and mysterious. She reached out and ran her hand over the polished oak wall. "As though I could ever be a stranger here."

END


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